


Wake Up Someday

by thepartyresponsible



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Assumptions, M/M, Misunderstandings, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-15 16:30:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14794019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepartyresponsible/pseuds/thepartyresponsible
Summary: Steve relaxes back against his chair. He takes a quick look – just checking, just making sure – over his shoulder, and he gets an unexpected and vaguely life-changing glimpse of Tony’s ass, as he bends over the pool table to line up his shot.When he looks back, Bucky’s staring over Steve’s shoulder, a familiar, dumb, dreamy look on his face. Steve feels something catch in his chest.“Oh,” he says. He clears his throat. God, he’s an idiot. He is anidiot. “Him, huh?”“Yeah,” Bucky says. He catches the corner of his mouth with his teeth, but it’s not enough to fight off the stupid grin lighting up his whole damn face. “That’s the one,” he says, low and fond.





	Wake Up Someday

**Author's Note:**

> So, originally, this was going to be my third fill for the 2018 Stony MCU Bingo. Because I don't excel at rules or reading comprehension, I didn't actually realize you couldn't have other pairings in the stories until I'd already written it. So, uh. Whoops?
> 
> The prompt for this one was "Different First Meetings." Because I have never - not once, in my entire life - known when to shut up, this goes considerably beyond the first meeting.
> 
> And, if you were hoping for the epic sage of Bucky and Clint, this, unfortunately, is not that story. This is about Steve and Tony. Bucky and Clint mostly just swig coffee and cause problems. I might write their story later.

                Steve wakes up in a warm room. Some part of him is grateful for that, but most of him knows it’s wrong. _You belong somewhere cold_ , he thinks, which is an odd sort of reflection to have, after waking up in a hospital bed. 

                But the nurse isn’t dressed right. And her hands shake, when she gets close.

                And the game on the radio is years out of date.

                Steve thinks about Bucky, laid out on a table, repeating his serial number with his eyes open and nothing behind them. He panics, a little. Or he gets angry. It’s always been hard to tell the difference.

                He makes it all the way up to the street, where everything is too loud and too flashy, lit up a thousand different colors, and he’s about to do something stupid, cause a real disturbance for all these nice people in their weirdly-cut clothes, when he hears Bucky, yelling his name.

                Steve turns so fast he nearly knocks a street sign flying. There he is. Bucky. Stepping cautiously out of the hole Steve made in the side of a building.

                “Hey,” Bucky says, hands held out and up, like he’s trying to calm Steve down, like they’re twelve years old and Charlie Vaughn just called Dottie Willcox a _cox-sucker_ again. “Hey, Steve, you gotta calm down, pal. You’re scaring people.”

                “Buck?” Steve stares, struck still by the sight of him. He wonders, ludicrously, if this is some kind of heaven. If, somehow, despite everything, he was still good enough to go to the same place as Bucky Barnes.

                He lost him _twice,_ and now he gets him a third time? What kind of odds are those?

                “ _Bucky_?” He takes a small step forward, still incredulous, hoping so hard it hurts in his chest.

                Another man comes jogging up behind Bucky, and Steve thinks for a second that it’s Howard, but then his features resolve into something rounder, a little less sharp-edged. Steve turns to face him, hands curling into fists, and Bucky steps neatly between them.

                “Stevie,” he says, warningly, “nobody here wants a fight.”

                Over Bucky’s shoulder, Steve can see the man that isn’t Howard doing something strange with his wristwatch. Behind them, there are agents of some kind, filtering in around the civilians, and Steve can feel himself being surrounded, but, with Bucky standing there, right in front of him, looking concerned but not worried, he finds he doesn’t care all that much.

                “Buck,” Steve says, dropping his hands. “What happened to your _hair_?”

 

\- - -

 

                Steve ends up, somehow, at a tower in New York. He couldn’t explain the process, if asked. He remembers looking up, staring at the Howard lookalike through a car window, watching while he blew kisses at scowling, uniformed agents and said, “Cheer up, buttercups. I let you sit ringside for the resurrection, but you don’t get to host the after party. Last time I turned in one of my guests, he almost got assassinated in your care. This one’s coming home with us.”

                And then he remembers looking out at the city, heart hammering faster and faster in his chest as he searches for a single damn thing he recognized.

                And then he remembers Bucky, sliding a hand over Steve’s eyes, another around the back of his neck, tugging him in against his shoulder, and saying, “Pal, do me a favor? Take a deep breath, and don’t throw up on my shoes.”

                And now he’s settling heavily onto a couch, Bucky beside him, and staring down at this hands while his brain catches and whirrs in his head. “Buck,” he says, softly, “I had a date.”

                “With Peggy?” Bucky asks. “Christ, Stevie.” There’s a brief pause. Steve can see Bucky’s mouth tugging down at the corners, and then Bucky lifts his head. “Hey, Stark,” he says, “can you--”

                “Yeah,” not-Howard says, nodding. “I’ve got you, Barnes.”

                “Who is that?” Steve says, quietly, half out of the side of his mouth, while he watches the man walk across the room to a stocked bar and busy himself pouring.

                “ _That_ ,” Bucky says, “is Iron Man.”

                Steve blinks at him, because he doesn’t know what the hell an Iron Man is, but this man looks like he’s made of skin and blood and bone like the rest of them. “He’s a what?”

                Bucky snorts. “Yeah, okay,” he says, “but that’s gonna impress the hell out of you in about twenty-four hours.”

                “Give me twelve,” the man calls from the bar. He’s loading drinks on a tray. Steve can’t figure out what the hell is going on.

                “Showoff,” Bucky accuses, fondly.

                “You’d know,” not-Howard returns, immediately. He looks up, smirking across the room, and he looks so much like Howard, in that moment, that Steve has to bite deep into his lip to keep from calling out to him.

                He’s in the future, somehow. He’s worked out that much. And Bucky’s still here, hasn’t aged much. But Steve doesn’t know how Bucky got here, or how _he_ got here, or who else might have made the jump with them. He’s scared to hear the list. He’s not ready to know who they lost, while he was gone.

                “That’s Tony Stark,” Bucky says, arm tightening around Steve’s shoulders like he can feel him start to fall apart. Bucky always did have a sense about those things. “He’s Howard’s kid.”

                “He’s Howard’s…?”

                He is Howard Stark’s _child_. How the hell is that possible? How the hell is Steve here, in a room, with a man who looks the same age – maybe _older_ – than the father Steve saw just a few days ago?

                “Hey,” Bucky says, voice low, soothing, like it used to be when Steve’s asthma flared up, when Bucky was trying to talk him back into a place where he could breathe. “Hey, Stevie, deep breaths for me, okay? Don’t lose it. Tony gets real prissy about structural damage.”

                “Very funny,” Tony says, as he sets the tray on the coffee table in front of them. “That’s very funny, because I don’t remember a single instance in which you _paid_ for any of that structural damage.”

                Bucky takes one of the tumblers off the tray and salutes Tony. “To rich benefactors,” he says.

                Steve stares, confused and doubtful, but he takes the glass when Bucky passes it to him. “Buck,” he says, “I can’t get drunk. Remember?”

                Bucky smiles at him. His smile is thinner than it used to be, like something has ground away at the edges of it. When he looks at Steve, he’s steady as always, but there’s something in his eyes that might be sadness, or might be guilt.

                “Stevie,” he says, “this is Tony _Stark_. There’s not a problem you’re gonna have that he can’t fix. And he fixed this one about a year and a half ago.” He grabs another tumbler and taps it against Steve’s. “Drink up, punk,” he says. “We need to talk.”

 

\- - -

 

                The future’s not so bad, really. It’s just overwhelming. They keep to Stark Tower, at first. Bucky does a good job of introducing things to him slow enough for him to adjust but not so slow that he feels insulted.

                It’s still a hell of a lot of information.

                Those first two weeks, Steve sleeps maybe four times. Bucky gets upset about it, but Steve has too much to catch up on, too many wars and disasters and tragedies, too much technology. And, anyway, he can’t shake the feeling that if he falls asleep, he won’t wake up again for seventy years.

                “You know,” Tony says, one morning, when he finds Steve in the communal kitchen, staring at his laptop, “I can make something that’ll knock you out for a while, if you want.”

                “Hard to put me under,” Steve says. He’s barely listening. He’s reading about the Cuban Missile Crisis.

                “Knocked out Barnes for twenty-four hours once,” Tony says, contemplatively. “He got the cheap Hydra knockoff of Erskine’s serum, but it still had quite a kick. I could change up the dosage. See what happens.”

                Steve stops. He blinks up at Tony. “How the hell did you knock Bucky out for twenty-four hours?”

                “Elephant tranquilizer,” Tony says, with a shrug. He blinks at the look on Steve’s face and then grimaces. “I mean, among other things. To be clear, this was back when he was the Winter Soldier. It’s not like we robbed a vet college and decided to get creative.”

                “Sounds like a good time, though,” Bucky says, as he wanders in. “Wanna do that later?”

                “Not on your life, Barnes,” Tony says. “I’m a professional. I’m an adult. I’m not gonna commit burglary for pet pills. We’ll just call a dealer.”

                “Yeah, that’s what everyone says about you, Stark,” Bucky says, with a roll of his eyes. “You always play too safe.”

                Tony huffs a breath, looking persecuted, and Steve watches them squabble while he finishes his eggs.

                They’re comfortable, the two of them. He guesses that makes sense, since they’ve been in this tower together for something like two years. Steve tracks the easy back-and-forth of their conversation, and he wonders what kind of disasters they’ve caused, with the unholy combination of Bucky’s calculated recklessness and Tony’s endless curiosity.

                Then again, he’s seen the Iron Man suit, and he’s seen the shiny nightmare of Bucky’s new arm. Whatever disasters they caused, they were probably strong enough, together, to fix.

                He’s still thinking about that when JARVIS interrupts their lazy breakfast. SHIELD needs assistance. There’s some kind of incident, over in Brooklyn.

                “Damn it,” Tony says, “I _just_ made this coffee.”

                “Oh, _you’ve_ got problems,” Bucky grumps back. “I haven’t even brushed my teeth yet.”

                Steve’s on his feet immediately. He looks between them, vaguely offended by their matching confused stares. “Well,” he says, “let’s go.”

                “Oh, hell no,” Bucky says. “Fights are for people who sleep at night, Steve.”

                “Don’t babysit me,” Steve says. “What else am I here for?”

                “You’re here to _live_ , asshole.” Bucky climbs to his feet, shaking his head. “Take a nap. We’ll bring you when you’re ready.”

                Steve turns to Tony, who gives him a sympathetic smile and a shake of his head. “Sorry, Cap,” he says. He tips his coffee mug toward Bucky. “I know exactly what he’s like when he doesn’t get his way. Gonna have to go with him on this one. But, hey, let me know about those Dumbo tranqs.”

                So they leave without him, and Steve has to ask JARVIS to pull up the news, just so he can watch them risk their lives, while he sits on the couch, drinking the coffee Stark left behind.

 

\- - -

 

                Later, he wanders down into Tony’s workshop, and Tony puts the soldering iron down and regards him with doe-brown eyes that are only a little bit wary. “You pissed?” he asks. “I would’ve let you tag along, but Barnes--”

                “Yeah, I know how Bucky gets.” Steve waves him off. He’s spent his whole life shoving back against Bucky. He knows you have to pick your battles, or your whole life becomes one. “Look,” he says, “I’m just—do we know how it happened? Me, in the ice? I just don’t want that to happen again.”

                Tony blinks. He focuses on Steve, eyebrows pulling together, and Steve feels stupid, and vulnerable, and a little like throwing a punch, just so he can control one damn thing in his life. “Rogers,” Tony says, bracingly, “we’re a long way from sea level.”

                Steve can still _feel_ it, sometimes. The water, crashing over him. The heaving of his lungs, the way he kept trying to hold Peggy and Bucky in his head, cling tight to the brightest parts of his life, while the cold hollowed him out, kept stealing air and light and filling him with dark, desperate panic.

                He hadn’t wanted to die scared. But he had anyway.

                Or he hadn’t, because now he’s here, talking to Howard’s son about how he can’t sleep at night because he’s an idiot, and a coward, who can’t get his feet under him in a future he didn’t ask for.

                “Hey,” Tony says. His voice is a little softer than Steve’s ever heard before, and he sets his chin, instinctively. “Barnes told me he’d kick my ass if I gave this to you without him, but, well.” He trails off with a shrug and turns to walk farther into his lab.

                Steve stays where he is, trying to get his head oriented the right direction, and he’s caught almost completely off-guard when Tony slips his shield into his hands.

                “Here,” he says. “We found this, too.”

                Steve hasn’t asked for many details about how he was found. Bucky and Tony told him the basics, that first night. Steve’s here because Tony sent bots out to find him, as a favor to Bucky, so Bucky would have something to bury. And Bucky’s here because Tony found SHIELD footage of the Winter Soldier murdering his parents, and he’d gone to kill the Winter Soldier, and, instead, he’d brought home Bucky Barnes.

                Steve stares hard at Tony’s face. He can’t get a read on Tony. He doesn’t know why Tony did any of this. He thinks, if he’d watched someone murder his mother, he wouldn’t have paused long enough to ask questions about whether they wanted to or not.

                He’s grateful, for what it’s worth, that Stark is a better man than he is. It’d be hell, trying to figure out this world without Bucky beside him. It’s some kind of hell already.

                “Thanks,” Steve says, hefting the shield.

                So, now he has two things from the time he left behind: his best friend, and his shield. And Tony Stark gave him both.

                “No problem, Cap,” Tony says. He gives Steve another long, considering look. “You know,” he says, “Barnes didn’t fight for a year, after we got him back. There’s no rush. If you don’t want to--”

                “I want to,” Steve says, immediately. That much, at least, he knows is true. “It’s what I know. It’s what I’m here for.”

                Tony snorts. His mouth hooks up, a little crooked, a little sad. “There’s the next mission,” he says, “and nothing else.” It sounds like he’s quoting something, but, if he is, Steve doesn’t get the reference. He misses a lot of references these days.

                “Yeah,” Steve says, with a nod. But it’s not quite right. There’s the next mission, and Bucky, and the dozens of children and grandchildren of the men and women he served with, and nothing else.

                Well, there’s maybe Tony Stark.

                “Lonely way to live, Rogers,” Stark tells him. He reaches up to rub at his face, and Steve’s brain stutters, for just a second, tracking the graceful arch of his wrist and the wry, sympathetic curve of his mouth.  

                “Thanks for the shield,” Steve says, because he can’t think of anything else to say. He should put it down, probably. He should certainly stop holding it like this, like he’s a half-second away from bracing against fire. But it feels good, feels right, feels like the kind of anchor that won’t give in a storm.

                “You need anything,” Tony says, with the kind of shrug that suggests he already knows Steve won’t ever ask, “let me know.”

                “Sure,” Steve says. He hesitates for a long second. Some part of him wants to stay, he realizes. Some stupid, childish part of him wants to stay in this workshop and bother Tony, who clearly has important work to do, just because he doesn’t want to be alone.

                He leaves. He has to.

                Later, he crawls into bed, and he takes the shield with him. He asks JARVIS to keep that to himself. He feels stupid, curled around it the way he used to, back when he and Bucky and all the others were bedding down in some empty barn for the night.

                As far as he knows, he doesn’t have any enemies in this time. And if he does, they wouldn’t know to look for him here, in Tony Stark’s palatial guest suite. And if they did, they sure as hell won’t get to him through Stark’s security, and Iron Man, and Bucky.

                But he sleeps better, anyway. Sleeps deep, for the first time this century, and he wakes up confused and groggy, a little bit panicked, but his heartrate slows, as soon as his hand falls across the familiar shape of his shield.

 

\- - -

 

                SHIELD wants to recruit him. They’ve been calling him, on that phone Tony gave him, and emailing him, on the account Tony set up. He shows Bucky, and he just gets an exasperated eye-roll and a deep, aggrieved sigh.

                “Those bastards,” Bucky says, but he sounds more annoyed than angry. “Don’t do it, Steve. We’ve been clearing Hydra out of their ranks, but who the hell knows if we’ve got them all yet? Better to just stick with us. We’ll do this together.”

                _Together_ sounds nice, but Bucky’s kept Steve on the sidelines since he woke up. It’s not worth pissing Bucky off, just to get to a fight, and it would be ungrateful to Stark, probably, but it would be a lie to say Steve’s not tempted.

                “So, what do I say?” Steve nods toward the laptop. “Have to say something, right?”

                Bucky shrugs. “Just do what I do. Tell them you’re Stark property, and, if they want you, they have to go through Tony.”

                “Stark property,” Steve repeats, faintly horrified.

                Bucky just nods. He looks immensely pleased with himself. “They hate that line,” he says. “If you ask nice, Tony will draw up a whole contract for them and everything.”

                “You are _not_ ,” Steve says, a bit sharper than he probably should, “anyone’s property.”

                Bucky blinks at him and then frowns, nudges Steve’s ankle with his foot. “Hey,” he says, “settle down, Stevie. Little late to be manning the barricades on that one.”

                “You _aren’t_ ,” Steve says. Because he isn’t. He never was. He shouldn’t have been.

                “Christ,” Bucky says. “It was a _joke_.”

                Steve swallows. He sets down the nice pencil Tony bought for him, pushes his notebook away. He can’t create when he feels like this. When he feels like this, all he’s good for is destroying. “Sure as hell isn’t funny, Buck.”

                Bucky runs a hand through his hair. He keeps it too long. He says he likes it that way, but Steve thinks it probably has more to do with the fact that he can’t tolerate anyone near his face with sharp objects. He saw him flinch, once, when Steve passed too close to him with a butter knife on his way to the sink, and, if he flinches from _Steve_ , he can’t imagine what he’d do to some poor barber.

                “Steve,” Bucky says, slowly.

                “I’m sorry,” Steve says. Bucky has asked him not to. Every time he starts to apologize, Bucky makes him stop, but it festers anyway, like some wound gone rancid under bandages, that they’re both just desperately trying to ignore. “Buck,” he says, “I’m _sorry_.”

                “Oh, Goddamn it,” Bucky says. His whole body tenses up.

                “You needed me,” Steve says. “And I wasn’t there.”

                Bucky rolls his eyes. He drags both hands down his face, and it feels like a punch, every time Steve sees the flash of Bucky’s metal arm, so he makes himself look, every time.

                “Go ahead,” Bucky says, shoulders tight, lips pressed into that special _dare you_ line that means Steve actually needs to watch his mouth. “Say you’re sorry one more fucking time, Rogers.”

                “You needed me,” Steve says, “and I _left_ you.”

                “You saved the world, asshole,” Bucky says, throwing his hands up. “I am _part of_ the world. You can’t apologize for not saving me from one thing because you were busy saving me from another. That’s just—that’s the stupidest—Rogers, I didn’t haul your dumb ass out of the bottom of the ocean so you could sit here and be a fucking _moron_ about everything.”

                “I should’ve been there,” Steve says. Because he _should_ have been. All those times Bucky was there when Steve needed him, and then Bucky needs him, and where the hell is Steve?

                Doing nothing. Being nothing. Being frozen at the bottom of the ocean.

                While Hydra puppeted Bucky around, broke his brain, _tortured_ him. For decades. Made him do all the things that Bucky would die before doing. Made Bucky into a weapon that killed their friends, killed their allies, killed civilians, killed _children_.

                “Yeah, well,” Bucky waves a dismissive hand in the air. “I should’ve fished you out decades ago, and here we are.”

                “I’m sorry,” Steve says, again. Just one more time.

                Bucky looks at him. He’s quiet for a long moment, and then all that rage spools out of him, and he’s just sad, and tired. He kicks Steve under the table. “Yeah, punk,” he says, tone heavy, voice soft, “I’m sorry, too.”

 

\- - -

                Steve gets so used to it just being him, Bucky, and Stark that he almost drops Clint, the first time he washes up at the breakfast table.

                “Hey,” Bucky says, a little warningly, as he crosses through Steve’s line of sight, deliberately breaking Steve’s focus. “That’s Clint. He’s fine.”

                “I’m _dying_ ,” Clint corrects. He’s sprawled out in his chair, bandaids on his face and arms, looking a little pale under his tan. He’s got bright blue eyes, well-muscled arms, and an easy, unblinking way of watching Steve that suggests he’s dangerous, maybe, when he wants to be. “Buck,” he says, and Steve frowns at the nickname. “Buck, I am _dying_.”

                “Yeah, dumbass,” Bucky grumbles back, “hold yourself together. Coffee’s brewing.”

                Clint makes a soft, wounded noise in the back of his throat and lets his head fall forward, thumping gently against the table. Steve catches a flash of purple in his ear, and he tenses up, thinks maybe Clint’s recording this, maybe Clint’s a spy, maybe he’s not safe, whatever Bucky thinks.

                He feels like an asshole, later, when he figures out it’s just a hearing aid.

                Bucky tells him, loud over the background noise, because they’ve all gone out to a bar together, and Clint ignored Steve’s question earlier, and Bucky wants him to know that it’s not because he’s usually that much of a jerk. “He’s a sweetheart,” Bucky says, frank and a little admiring, like he’s saying something he only barely believes in. “Rescues kittens, I swear to God. But he’s just.” He gestures at his ears, makes a kind of gently baffled face. “Doesn’t hear so well, sometimes.”

                “Oh,” Steve says. He’d feel worse about it, probably, if he weren’t distracted by being completely overwhelmed by being out of the tower for the first time in weeks.

                He wonders if they picked this bar specifically because there’s nothing special about it. Aside from the lights, and the cash registers, and the clothes, and the lack of smoke, it could be the 1940s.

                Across the bar, Tony and Clint are playing darts, and Tony is losing, spectacularly and ungraciously but with a kind of long-suffering tolerance that suggests this is what he expected all along.

                “Hey, Stevie,” Bucky says, soft but urgent enough that it gets Steve’s attention. He’s staring at the bottle on his hand, picking at the label with a fingernail. It’s an anxious tell, and _anxious_ is an unusual look on Bucky. “I gotta tell you something.”

                Steve hunches forward, over the stained table between them. He tips his head Bucky’s direction, but his eyes keep drifting back to Clint and Tony, who are in the process of abandoning the darts board for the nearest pool table.

                “What is it, Buck?” Steve’s _listening_. Bucky’s his best friend. Of course he’s listening.

                It’s just that it’s a rough bar. And Steve doesn’t sense any real danger, but, if there is, he knows it won’t come for him or Bucky. It’ll be Clint, maybe, who’s stocky and well-built but a little over-enthusiastic with his mannerisms, like an ill-trained puppy still growing into his paws. Or it’ll be Tony, who’s dressed down, wearing something he wandered out of the workshop in, but still looks entirely too clean for this place, too sharp and too shiny.

                “Steve,” Bucky says.

                Steve lets himself look for one second longer, and then he turns to Bucky. He trusts Bucky to keep an eye on them, over his shoulder. Hell, Tony Stark is Iron Man; he can look after himself.

                “What is it, Buck?” Steve repeats, eyebrows up.

                Bucky sighs. He takes a fortifying sip of the beer in front of him. “Look,” he says, “you remember, back when we were younger? And you asked me if I ever looked at other guys, and I said no?”

                Steve blinks. “Oh,” he says. “Yeah.” He remembers that conversation. He remembers the fight afterwards, too.

                He’d known the truth, even then. He’d known Bucky was lying to him. And it had hurt that Bucky would lie about a thing like that, because he’d always said – sworn every time Steve asked him – that he didn’t think it was wrong or bad, the way Steve looked, the way he wanted to touch, but then there he went, lying to Steve’s face about wanting to do the same damn thing.

                Like it was fine for Steve, it was fine if it was someone _else_ , but it wasn’t fine, if it was him.

                Bucky clears his throat. He blushes when he’s ashamed of himself. He always has. It’s how they got caught so often, back when they were kids. Nobody would believe it, looking at the pair of them now, but Steve was always the better liar, back when they were young.

                “I, uh,” Bucky says. He flounders. His whole face folds up.

                “I know, Buck,” Steve says. “I always did. Christ, remember when Bobby Kelly showed up home after basic, and you damn near broke your neck falling off the fire escape?”

                Bucky rolls his eyes. “Christ,” he says, “shut _up_ about Bobby Kelly. You’re the one who went home with him.”

                Steve grins at him over the rim of his beer. “Sure as hell did,” he says, maybe a bit more pleased with himself than the situation truly warrants. “As I’m the only one who _asked_.”

                Bucky huffs out an exasperated breath, and the unhappy line of his shoulders drops back into their more characteristic easy slump. He rolls his eyes. “Well, bully for you, you asshole.”

                Steve relaxes back against his chair. He takes a quick look – just checking, just making sure – over his shoulder, and he gets an unexpected and vaguely life-changing glimpse of Tony’s ass, as he bends over the pool table to line up his shot.

                When he looks back, Bucky’s staring over Steve’s shoulder, a familiar, dumb, dreamy look on his face. Steve feels something catch in his chest.

                It hits suddenly, all the times he’s seen Bucky and Tony together. Their easy back-and-forth, the way they suit up and fight together and sprawl out and relax together. The way they _live together_ , have lived together for _years_.

                He thinks about Tony, building robots to search the Atlantic for his body, because Bucky asked him to.

                “Oh,” he says. He clears his throat. God, he’s an idiot. He is an _idiot_. “Him, huh?”

                “Yeah,” Bucky says. He catches the corner of his mouth with his teeth, but it’s not enough to fight off the stupid grin lighting up his whole damn face. “That’s the one,” he says, low and fond.

                Steve slept for seventy years, but Bucky, he went through hell. He deserves whatever happiness he can find. And, anyway, Steve’s known Bucky his whole life. The early rules of their friendship still apply. _Finders keepers_ , he figures.

                It’s only fair. Bucky got there first.

 

\- - -

 

                Steve’s braced for the first fight. He trains, every day. Tony keeps rebuilding the gym for him, and Steve keeps telling him he doesn’t have to, but Tony does it anyway. He’s ready. He’s ready for whatever nightmare the world spits up to face them.

                He is not ready for the casual way Tony drops beside him on the couch, on a Wednesday, with one of his appalling green smoothies in hand. “Hey, Cap,” he says. “We’ve taking another Hydra base tomorrow. Sounds like they’ve got some of the personnel that used to run the Winter Soldier program. Wanna crash the party?”

                Tony and Bucky have been pulling Hydra apart since Steve woke up. Sometimes, SHIELD is invited, and sometimes SHIELD isn’t. Steve has never been invited at all.

                “Oh,” he says. He looks down at the sketch in his hands. It’s Bucky and Tony and Clint, arguing over last night’s poker game. He’s drawn Clint, mischief all over his face, and Bucky, staring at him like he’s a bit suckerpunched, and it’s just wishful thinking manifesting, but he’s a little embarrassed by the idea that Tony might see him, drawing his boyfriend making eyes at another man.

                “Don’t have to,” Tony says, easily. He’s looking curiously down at the sketch, but, when Steve hurriedly closes his notebook, he just looks up at him, casual and unconcerned.

                Steve guesses, if you’re Tony Stark, you don’t have to feel threatened by much.

                “No,” Steve says, with a nod. “I’m in.”

                Of course he is. This is what he was made for. Fighting isn’t the only thing he’s good for, just like it’s not the only thing Bucky’s good for. But it is, unquestionably, the thing he’s _best_ at.

                And, ever since Bucky told him, that very first night, Steve’s been itching to tear into the people that hurt him. It won’t feel good, because it never does, but it’ll feel right, afterwards. And Steve could use a little bit of that.

 

\- - -

 

                Clint comes along, brings his bow and a redhead who introduces herself as Natasha. They make quite a pair. They remind Steve a little of him and Bucky, the way they argue the whole time, even while they unconsciously move to counterbalance each other. They’re a unit, the two of them. He spends the whole mission trying to work out if they’re a couple, and, after it’s over, he’s still not sure.

                Twenty minutes into their post-mission bar trip, he’s absolutely sure that Natasha is not with Clint.

                “Wow,” Steve says, a little shell-shocked, as he watches Natasha exit, arm-in-arm with a woman he’s reasonably certain was tending bar a moment ago.

                “Oh, yeah, Nat,” Clint says, with a tolerant roll of his eyes and a proud smile on his face. “She must’ve wanted you to think she’s a proper lady. She’s usually gone in five minutes flat.”

                “That woman,” Tony says, with feeling, “is an inspiration.”

                “Oh, shut up,” Bucky says, knocking a shoulder into Tony’s side. “You don’t so bad yourself.”

                Tony flashes a grin his way, bright and smug, but there’s something in his eyes that seems a little off. Sad, maybe. Steve frowns, tipping his head, wondering what the hell Tony has to be sad about.

                When he looks at Bucky, he’s just sitting there, sipping his beer, utterly oblivious.

                “I’ll get the next round,” Steve says, standing up quickly. If they’re having problems, he doesn’t want to know about it.

                “Oh, get me another,” Clint says, pointing at the colorful blue mess in his glass.

                “I don’t even know what that is,” Steve says, eyeing it distrustfully.

                Clint grins and finishes it, slurping rudely at the straw to get the last of the dregs. “It’s _happiness_ , Rogers,” he tells him. “Happiness, and rum.”

                Steve looks to Bucky for clarification, and he’s struck, jarringly, by the look on Bucky’s face as he stares at Clint.

                He thinks, for one sickening second, that maybe what he’d drawn hadn’t been wishful thinking after all.

                But Bucky’s never been that kind of asshole. And Steve, really, should learn to mind his own damn business.

 

\- - -

 

                Except then, not half a week later, Steve wanders into one of the living rooms, interested in the lighting he can get through the window, and he finds Clint lounging on the couch, Bucky right there on top of him, mouths together and hands wandering.

                It hits like a shield to the face.

                Steve’s nothing, for a long second, and then he is _pissed_.

                 “Alright,” Steve says, hooking a hand in the back of Bucky’s collar and hauling him away from Clint. “It’s been awhile since I kicked your ass, Barnes. Guess maybe we’re due.”

                Bucky stares up at him, mouth agape, from where he’s landed ungracefully on the floor. “What the _fuck_ , Steve?”

                Steve pushes his sleeves up to his elbows. “Come on,” he says, “get up.”

                Bucky climbs obliging to his feet. “Listen,” he says, “you haven’t kicked my ass in approximately _ever_ , so I’m real confused as to why you’ve picked--”

                “Oh, _c’mon_.” Steve gestures pointedly at Clint, who’s still lying sprawled out on the couch, hoodie pushed up halfway to his shoulders, looking wide-eyed and bewildered.

                When both men turn to stare at him, Clint tugs his sweatshirt down to his waist and scowls at Steve before turning a confused look on Bucky. “What the fuck? I thought you said he was fine with this.”

                Bucky throws his hands up. “He _is_ fine with this.”

                “Like hell,” Steve says. He gestures again at Clint. “I am not fine with _this_.”

                “Starting to sound a little personal there, Cap,” Clint says, and he climbs to his feet, chin jutting out. But Steve’s not mad at Clint. He’s disappointed as all hell, but that’s different. He’ll deal with Clint later. _Bucky’s_ the one that needs dealing with now.

                “You keep talking about him like that,” Bucky says, low and warning, “and I’m gonna make you apologize for it.”

                “I’m gonna make _you_ apologize!” Steve yells back. “You’re gonna do this _here_? Are you out of your damn mind?”

                “Are _you_?” Bucky moves toward him, still not quite in range, but getting closer. “Little late to play the blushing virgin, Stevie. You brought plenty of guys back to that apartment we shared. Walls weren’t that thick, pal. Nobody on our floor was confused as to what you were doing with them.”

                “ _Sure_ ,” Steve says, because, yes, fine, he’d known at the time the walls weren’t thick, and maybe he hadn’t been as considerate about that as he could’ve been, but he’d been young, and exuberant, and, anyway, Bucky can go straight to hell with that defense, since it doesn’t relate to this situation at all. “But I only ever brought one home at a time, Buck.”

                Bucky throws a hand out, points sharply in Clint’s direction. “How many do you see, Steve? How many?”

                “In his _house_ , Bucky? In the house he lets you stay in? Just out in the open, where he could walk in at any moment? What the hell are you _thinking_?”

                “What the hell are _you_ thinking? You’re not making any Goddamn sense!”

                “Oh,” Clint says, suddenly. There’s a great deal of weight to that syllable. It’s heavy enough to get both of them to look his direction. “Oh, shit, Buck, he thinks you’re fucking Stark.”

                “What?” Bucky says. “No, he doesn’t. That’s ridiculous. Why the hell would he….” There’s a long, unsteady pause, and then, suddenly, Bucky looks over at Steve with the kind of bald-faced derision Steve thought they’d left back in grade school. “God love you, Stevie. You are one dumb son of a bitch.”

                “ _Hey_ ,” Steve says.

                Bucky shakes his head. “Don’t ‘ _hey_ ’ me, dumbass. You thought I was fucking Stark! You’re lucky you sprouted that jawline, pal, or nobody would hang out with you.”

                Steve stops. He looks between them, at the blush on Clint’s face, and the half-horrified half-irritated look on Barnes’ face, and he frowns. “Okay,” he says, “but in the bar, you said--”

                “I said _him_ ,” Bucky says, gesturing at Clint. “I said _Clint_.”

                “You didn’t,” Steve says. He sees now, how everything went wrong. “You didn’t say Clint. You just kinda looked over at them, all lovestruck, and I figured---”

                “You figured Tony,” Bucky says, with a very sharp-edged patience, “because you’ve been mooning after him since you woke up.”

                “Lovestruck,” Clint says. He shoots Bucky a quick, sideways look, and a smile bubbles up on his face. “Jesus, Buck.”

                “Yeah, we’re all surprised,” Bucky says. His hands land on his hips, which is a posture Steve recognizes from Bucky’s _mother_ , and he’s baffled as hell to see it here. “We’re all real surprised that I’m in love with the guy I’ve been with for _two years_. Fucking headline news.”

                “I haven’t been mooning after him,” Steve says, about thirty seconds too late.

                Bucky gives him another patient look, and this one has fewer sharp edges. “Stevie,” he says. “God love you, you hopeless fucking idiot. Go tell Tony exactly why you’ve been so fucking weird with him.”

                Steve clears his throat. “I’m not gonna--”

                “Yeah, you are,” Bucky says, a little louder. “Get _out_ of here, Rogers. I’ve got plans with Clint, and we’re not selling tickets.”

                “If you don’t want people to watch,” Steve says, as he’s leaving, “you shouldn’t fool around in a _shared space_.”

                “Get _lost_ ,” Bucky says.

                Steve narrowly dodges the pillow Bucky throws at his retreating back.

 

\- - -

 

                When he gets down to the workshop, the doors open immediately, and Tony waves his hands, sends projected screens scattering. “Need something, Cap?”

                Steve stares at hm. He imagines Clint next to him, and he can’t for the life of him track how Bucky would look at the two of them and pick the blonde. There’s nothing _wrong_ with Clint. He’s sweet, like Bucky said, and he’s content with his rougher edges, fit easily in his skin. Steve can see how, for Bucky, maybe there’s something reassuring about a man who doesn’t seem to spend much time apologizing for what the world’s made him.

                But then there’s Tony, who rearranges the world to fit him, who isn’t a soldier or an officer or an agent, who built a suit of armor and made himself a new category of guardian. Tony, who has the heart to put himself between people and danger, but didn’t have the stomach to kill the Winter Soldier. Tony, the futurist, who sees the worst of the present and dedicates himself to the best of the future.

                He thinks about what Bucky said: _This is Tony Stark. There’s not a problem you’re gonna have that he can’t fix._

                It was a perfectly valid assumption, he tells himself. It was fair to assume Bucky picked Tony. Anyone else would’ve thought the same.

                “I thought you and Bucky,” he says, without any damn context, because he is _bad_ at this. Has always been bad at this. He makes a gesture that’s just supposed to mean _together_ , but it gets a little pornographic, given the connotations. He drops his hands quickly to his sides. “Well,” he says, and then trails off with a shrug.

                Tony squints at him. For a second, he looks completely lost, but then he seems to peer into the scattered signals of Steve’s fumbling explanation and divine an answer. “Oh,” he says. “Me and Barnes, huh?”

                “Well,” Steve says, again. “You two, you’re always--- talking, I guess.”

                Tony could laugh at him. _Should_ laugh at him, probably, but he just tips his head like he’s thinking it through. “Yeah,” he says, “we’re close. I can see it. People think that about Rhodey and me, sometimes.”

                “Yeah,” Steve says, with a nod.

                “Would’ve been weird, though,” Tony says. He recalls his screens, starts flicking through schematics. It’s a distraction tactic, but Steve’s not sure which of them Tony’s trying to distract. “He was a little, ah. Unmoored, when he came back. Wouldn’t’ve been equitable, you know? Would’ve been…”

                He trails off with a shrug, and Steve’s stomach swoops and rises, and he thinks this is the best part of Tony, probably. People think he’s careless, but he’s the opposite. He’s juggling so many calculations, chasing down a hundred different theories, and, on the surface, it seems like he’s not paying attention at all.

                “I’m not,” Steve says, suddenly.

                Tony’s eyes slide over to him, and he’s got that puzzled look on his face again. “You’re not,” he repeats.

                “Unmoored,” Steve says. It’s important that Tony know this. “I’m a little—sure, it’s been disorienting. But I’m not—I have Bucky. I’m fine.”

                Tony stares at him. There’s a flash of comprehension followed immediately by a deep, furrowed, doubting frown, like he’s rejecting whatever conclusion he just reached.

                “Hey,” Steve says, moving toward him, “you wanna get dinner?”

                “You hungry?” Tony asks, cautiously. His hands go still, and the screens disappear all over again.

                “No,” Steve says, “I just wanna take you out.”

                Tony hesitates. Steve can practically hear his brain, turning over, chasing down too many thoughts at once.

                It’s nice, that Tony’s so careful. He’s his own kind of a sweet, a little more practical, a little less visible. It’s _nice_. But Steve has no patience for it right now. He thinks, if he lets him, Tony could think his way out of every nice thing that could happen to him.

                Tony’s just as reckless as Steve is. But they share the same bad habit of only ever being really reckless with themselves.

                Steve steps forward, moves right into Tony’s space, and there’s a second, when his mouth is hovering an inch over Tony’s, that he hesitates. The second after that, Tony’s mouth is pressed against his, and his hands are on Steve’s shoulder, the back of his neck, and Steve’s pressed up tight against the long, lean line of his body.

                Tony tastes like coffee, and he smells like machines and expensive cologne. He kisses like somebody who knows exactly what he’s doing. When Steve wraps a hand around his waist, runs his thumb down toward the hollow of his hip, he makes a sound that feels like a revelation, like the first taste of something that might prove habit-forming.

                “Hey,” Tony says, a few minutes later, a little breathless, a little disheveled. “Let’s order in.”

                “Hm,” Steve says, mouth dropping to Tony’s jaw, his throat, the dip right above his collarbone.

                It’s tempting. Steve’s still adjusting to the future, feels disoriented and exhausted every time he steps foot outside. But Tony deserves better than some throwback super solider who only leaves Stark Tower to fight.

                “No,” Steve says, pulling back. “C’mon,” he adds, at the persecuted noise Tony makes, “let me take you out. We’ll get dinner.”

                Tony heaves a heavy sigh, fakes an irritated pout that Steve wants to kiss off his face. “You know what’s nice about staying in?” Tony tugs at Steve’s shirt, which he’s somehow worked halfway open. “No dress code.”

                Steve laughs, ducks his head. He kisses him, high up on his cheekbone, right beneath his eye, and Tony’s eyes flutter shut, like he’s not sure what to do with things like that. “If you drive us in one of those fast cars,” Steve says, cajolingly, “we can fool around in the parking lot.”

                Tony blinks. “No way we’re gonna get up to anything interesting,” he says, but he’s setting himself to rights, tucking his shirt in, smoothing his hair back. “You’re too big to pretzel yourself around in any of those cars.”

                Steve gives him a patient, sidelong look as he does up the buttons of his shirt. “Super soldiers,” he says, “are very flexible.”

                Tony stares at him. After a long, speculative moment, he swallows. “Shit,” he says. “Okay. Let’s go.”

                Steve laughs, and a strange, comfortable lightness settles over him. He reaches out, takes Tony’s hand, twines their fingers together, and Tony gives him a thoughtful look as they set off toward the doors. As they wait outside the elevator, Tony leans in, kisses his cheek, like Steve did earlier.

                _Exactly_ like Steve did earlier. He’s practicing, Steve thinks. Must not be used to things like this.

                That’s fine. _Equitable_ , he thinks. They have things to teach each other.

                When they step outside the tower, the sense of being adrift hits all over again, waves of sounds and signals he only barely understands, but Tony’s hand is in his, its own kind of anchor, and Steve just ducks his head a little, tightens his grip, holds on.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is taken from "Night Light" by The Mountain Goats. 
> 
> For fic updates, follow me [on tumblr](https://thepartyresponsible.tumblr.com/).


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